The West Midlands Automotive Industry: The Road Downhill Donnelly, T., Begley, J., Collis, C. Author post-print (accepted) deposited by Coventry University’s Repository Original citation & hyperlink:

Donnelly, T, Begley, J & Collis, C 2016, 'The West Midlands Automotive Industry: The Road Downhill' Business History, vol 59, pp. 56-74. DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2016.1235559 https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2016.1235559

DOI 10.1080/00076791.2016.1235559 ISSN 0007-6791 ESSN 1743-7938 Publisher: Taylor & Francis This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Business History on 20 Oct 2016 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00076791.2016.1235559 Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. This document is the author’s post-print version, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer-review process. Some differences between the published version and this version may remain and you are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.

1

The West Midlands Automotive Industry: The Road Downhill.

Authors: Tom Donnelly, Jason Begley & Clive Collis

Contact Author: Jason Begley

Address: SURGE,

The Futures Institute,

Coventry University,

Cheetah Rd

Coventry CV1 25L

Email: Jason.Begley@coventry.ac.uk

Keywords: Economic crisis, industrial decline, mergers and acquisitions, investment, market

share, government policy.

2

Abstract

This paper examines how the structure of the automotive industry in the West Midlands has

changed since the 1970s. In the early 1970s the West Midlands accounted for circa 60 per cent of

total car production in the UK. By 2008, this had dwindled to 18 per cent. The discussion here

will focus particularly on the most likely reasons for the decline in volume production and the

region’s increasing reliance on relatively small scale luxury car production. The automotive

industry was caught up in the general de-industrialisation that took place in the region since the

mid 1960s prior to the economic crisis of the early 1980s, as well as suffering from the effects of

increasing globalization in the car industry itself. By 2008 the context for the sector had become

the global financial crisis.

Due to a lack of economies of scale and investment the domestic firms such as British Leyland

and Rootes became increasingly unable to compete in the market place despite restructuring and

government intervention. Similarly foreign direct investment by firms such as Chrysler, Peugeot,

BMW and Ford through a series of takeovers failed to restore prosperity and eventually all of

them withdrew from the region. The outcomes have led to factory closures and a hollowing out

of both the assembly and component sides of the industry, leaving the region heavily dependent

on Jaguar-Land Rover which has been acquired recently by the Indian conglomerate, Tata. This

paper assesses the reasons for the decline of the automotive sector in the West Midlands region

by contextualizing its growth and decline against that of the UK auto sector as a whole.

Considerable emphasis is placed on the fates of a number of key firms in the region – the British

Leyland Motor Corporation, MG Rover, Rootes and Jaguar – with explanations offered for their

decline.

3

Introduction

Administratively, the English West Midlands region is comprised of: the three counties of

Warwickshire, Worcestershire, and Staffordshire; the four unitary authorities of the County of

Herefordshire, Shropshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Telford and Wrekin; and the seven metropolitan

areas of Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Coventry. In the

early 1960s the West Midlands region was second only to the South East in terms of economic

prosperity but after the mid 1960s economic decline began in the West Midlands. During the

1970s it had the lowest economic growth of any British region and suffered particularly badly

from the recession at the turn of that decade. Between 1980 and 1983 the West Midlands

suffered the highest increase in the unemployment rate, the largest contraction of the

employment base and the worst long term unemployment of any English region.1 The West

Midlands region has been known traditionally as the birth place of the UK automotive industry

and for most of the twentieth century the auto manufacturers/assemblers such as Rootes, Austin,

Jaguar, Standard, Alvis, Lanchester and many others, despite the vagaries of the trade cycle and

interruptions occasioned by two World Wars, boomed with the region being virtually a weather

vane for measuring the health of UK manufacturing.2

Today everything is changed and volume manufacturing has all but disappeared from the area.

From the late 1960s the industry began to enter an elongated period of near continuous economic

decline, witnessed in the first instance in the series of mergers that led to the creation of British

Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC) in 1968. This proved disastrous in the long term, and after

passing through a series of different owners, the firm ultimately known as MG Rover finally

went out of business in 2005. Similarly, the long established firm of Rootes, which had been

taken over by the American multinational, Chrysler, in the late 1960s before falling into the

hands of France’s Peugeot in the late 1970s, closed its gates for the last time in 2007. The

significance of the latter was that it represented the end of volume car production in the West

Midlands, leaving only the BMW plant at Cowley in adjacent Oxford producing the Mini, but

that is somewhat peripheral to this article.3 What volume production remains in the UK is owned

by the Japanese firms of Honda, Toyota and Nissan at Swindon, Burnaston and Sunderland

respectively. All that survives of Vauxhall’s car production is its plant at Ellesmere Port near

Liverpool following the termination of car making at its Luton facility. Ford has ceased

4

producing cars entirely in the UK following the switching of its Dagenham factory to engine

production. The net result is that at the time of writing, the car industry in the West Midlands is

almost entirely dependent on the Indian-owned Jaguar- Land Rover (JLR) plants at Solihull and

Castle Bromwich which produce a range of high quality and expensive luxury vehicles plus a

small number of specialist niche firms which are trying to penetrate the emerging electric

car/hybrid market.4

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the reasons why the West Midland’s car

industry fared so badly from the 1960s onwards. It will focus on the period after the near

bankruptcy of BL in 1974, when teetering on the edge of bankruptcy it was taken over by the

National Enterprise Board, down to the recession of the mid 2000s when it was feared that the

industry might disappear completely as a result of near continuous hollowing out in the assembly

and components sides. The paper will discuss the secular decline of volume production, the

structural changes that have occurred, the consequences of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into

the area by Chrysler, Peugeot, BMW and Ford with a final passing reference to Tata’s

acquisition of JLR. It will include a discussion of the consequences of dealing with secular

decline and also those of foreign ownership when decision making is not only external to the

region, but to the UK itself.

Contextualising the West Midlands Automotive Industry

The long term fate of the West Midlands car industry cannot be divorced from the impact of de-

industrialisation in British industry in the 1970s and 1980s, nor from the growing

internationalisation and subsequent globalisation of the industry after the Second World War.

As Dicken has argued, the automotive industry is the most global of all industries, employing

over sixty million people with its markets and supply chains spanning the globe.5 Moreover, as

cars become technically more sophisticated, development costs have risen and so in search of

cost recovery assemblers and manufacturers have widened the geographical limits of their

purchase areas, while at the same time trying not to skimp on quality. For example, Jaguar’s

European supply chain now goes far beyond the UK, stretching from Portugal to Polish Silesia.

Furthermore, with the opening of Eastern Europe and the emergence of countries such as China,

domestic producers in West Europe have seized the opportunity of opening new plants and

factories in countries such as a the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and even Romania due to

5

the availability of lower costing labour and the opportunity of future market potential. It could be

argued that this has contributed to a degree of hollowing out of in both assembly and component

production in Western Europe, a factor from which the West Midlands has not been immune.6

The 1980s and 1990s saw waves of consolidation and FDI across the international automotive

industry through acquisitions and mergers and alliances. These were viewed as strategic methods

of business growth and development. They were utilised for both offensive and defensive

reasons which can be summed up as being a mixture of a desire to enter new markets or market

segments, gain increased market share, acquire technologies and if possible obtain access to low

cost labour, and, in the case of BMW’s acquisition of the Rover Group, to warn off hostile

predators. Ford, for instance, after failing to gain a foothold in the prestige European luxury

market with its Scorpio and Cosworth models, formed the Premier Automotive Group by taking

over a suite of firms, namely, Aston Martin (1987), Jaguar (1989) Volvo (1999) and Land Rover

(2000.) The message appeared to be that if the in-company-bred model failed to succeed the only

alternative was to buy ‘the real thing. Contrastingly, as will be discussed later, BMW, the modest

sized German luxury vehicle producer, for defensive reasons moved in the opposite direction by

buying Britain’s MG Rover to gain economies of scale and small car technology as well as

getting control of Land Rover. In other words this entire process was indeed the creation of truly

global enterprises that left Britain’s ailing domestic car industry far behind in terms of total

production, technologies and market reach at both the volume and luxury ends of the trade.7

The fate of the West Midlands though cannot be divorced from the processes of de-

industrialisation that affected the UK from the 1960s onwards. The British economy had long

suffered from a North-South division dating back to the First World War with the older

smokestack industries of coal, iron, steel, and shipbuilding being located in Wales, Scotland and

the North East of England. The region south of the river Trent was home to lighter engineering

industries such as automotives, electronics, telecommunications and avionics. By the 1960s there

was evidence that these, too, were showing signs of being uncompetitive and that geographically

the West Midlands was suffering from an over concentration of the ‘new staples.’ As early as

1959 The Times warned that Coventry was particularly vulnerable to a downturn in these modern

industries because they were as much interconnected in their own way as were the older staples.8

The question then arises as to how these industries would be affected by government policy.

6

Rarely have British governments of any political colour exhibited a positive long-term industrial

policy. In the 1960s and 1970s government’s tended to intervene only in times of crisis,

witnessed by the spate of government inspired mergers, often followed by plant closures, that

affected the electronics, telecommunications, shipbuilding and auto industries in an effort to find

national champions that could compete against the threats posed by American multinationals

and their emerging European counterparts. In the auto industry, as will be discussed below, it

was this concept that heralded the creation of British Leyland (BL).9

National and regional governments often try to attract inwards FDI as a means of arresting

industrial decline and as an instrument of industrial regeneration through new products,

technologies, work processes and potentially by investing in R&D to the benefit of the wider

industrial community. The economic problems of the early 1980s and accompanying rising

unemployment led to the establishment of the West Midlands Industrial Development

Association in 1984 to attract FDI and so help reinvigorate the region. Detailed analysis of FDI

in the Midlands showed that by the end of the 1980s, the region had improved markedly as a

destination for inwards FDI. Its share of inward investment projects rose from 6 % in 1983s to 16

% in 1988 when its share of associated jobs stood at 25 % thus placing the area at the top end of

the UK league table for FDI alongside Wales and Scotland. Key factors in inward location

decisions included the central location of the West Midlands within the UK, with excellent

national, regional and local physical communications.10

As has already been stated, Chrysler,

Ford, Peugeot and Tata, have all chosen to invest in the region at various times. Indeed, one third

of all inwards investment in the 1980s was in the traditional industries of metal goods,

engineering and vehicles.

Decline of the UK Automotive Industry

A considerable amount of ink has been spilled in discussing the demise of the volume production

of cars in Britain. The key reasons offered for the decline include a lack of low levels of

investment, a lack of economies of scale (Rhys, 1972) poor profitability, low productivity

(Williams, et al, 1983; Bhaskar, 1979; Whisler, 1999), expedient government policy (Dunnett,

1978) volatile labour relations (Thoms and |Donnelly, 2000) and the effects of

internationalization (Coffey, 2009) exhibited by deteriorating market share at home and abroad,

as Adeney notes by emphasising the difficult international market conditions faced by the sector.

7

The various fuel crises made increasing competition from foreign producers even more

challenging.11

Whisler also refers to the perception that management of the UK automotive

industry at the time as being liable for a range of decisions that also served to undermine the

sector. However, no one cause can be singled out and space prevents an in depth analysis of all

of these and so only the most salient points will be analysed. Thus before moving on to

discussing specific cases a number of more general explanations will be offered.

Figure 1: Automotive production in the West Midlands and UK, 1970-2008.

Source: SMMT annual reports, 1970-2008

That the car industry in Britain experienced decline is not in doubt as Figure 1 shows. More

importantly for the purposes of this paper, it is also obvious that the industry in the West

Midlands followed a similar downwards trajectory, as demonstrated in Figure 1 above and

Figure 2 below. Output peaked in the years between 1970 and 1973, during the years of the

‘Barber Boom’, when the region accounted for 75 per cent of all UK output in 1971. By 1975

both regionally and nationally total output fell, but the region still accounted for 65 per cent of

UK production. Admittedly this was at a time when both BL and Chrysler UK were experiencing

serious difficulties. Nevertheless from then onwards the overall trend was downwards, and by

the recession of 1981-82 West Midlands output had fallen to 53 per cent of total production, and

0

500,000

1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

19

70

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00

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20

08

Output UK

Total WM

8

by 1988 this figure had fallen beneath 50 per cent.12

The coming on stream of Japanese

transplants from the late 1980s into the early 90s contributed to a revival in national output, but

these new firms were located outside the West Midlands Region, as the relative decline in West

Midlands output continued.

By the turn of the 20th

century the relevant output figure had dropped to 37 per cent before falling

to 18 per cent in 2008, this latter drop being caused primarily by the closures of MG Rover’s

Longbridge plant and Peugeot’s factory at Ryton on the outskirts of Coventry in 2005 and 2007

respectively.13

Figure 2: Automotive production in main West Midlands firms, 1970-2008.

Source: SMMT annual reports, 1970-2008

Paralleling the fall in output was a decline in the numbers employed. The collapse of BL and

Chrysler in the 1970s and subsequent plant closures saw the numbers employed fall sharply.

Between 1980 and 1983 some 165,000 jobs were lost nationally. In Coventry alone BL’s

workforce shrank from 27,000 to 8,000 between 1975 and 1984, while Chrysler’s dropped from

16,000 to 8,000 in the years 1965-76 and to just under 3,000 by 2003-04.14

Finally, the end of

production at Longbridge in 2005 saw some 6,000 jobs disappear, but it needs to be remembered

that as late as 2004 the industry, including the components sector, still provided employment for

65,000 people, leaving the region twice as reliant on this industry compared to any other UK

region.15

0

100000

200000

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600000

700000

800000

900000

1000000

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08

Jaguar

Land Rover

Rover

Peugeot

9

Having provided an overarching context for the decline of the automotive industry during the

period under examination, the aim then of the following sections of this paper is to explain the

secular decline of the automotive sector in the West Midlands, developing the argument through

to the current incarnation of the industry in the region. To do so, the focus is placed on the key

firms that were active in the region from the early 1950s through to the current era.

From BLMC to MG Rover: secular decline

The origins of the weaknesses of the car industry in the West Midlands are rooted deep in its

long history. In the 1950s it became obvious that the many car plants in the area, such as those

owned by Rootes, Standard, Alvis, Lanchester and to a lesser degree Austin and Morris, were too

small in size, as firms increasingly sought economies of scale. As early as 1952 Austin and

Morris merged, though effectively the former took over the latter. Several times during the same

decade Standard and Rootes engaged in merger talks because of the increasing weaknesses in the

market place, but the proposals fell through mainly because of personality clashes between the

directorates of both companies.16

Eventually in 1961, desperate for a partner, Standard allowed

itself to be taken over by Leyland, the Lancashire bus manufacturer. The early 1960s proved no

better and there were further moves towards industrial consolidation with the greater part of the

industry falling in 1967 into two groups: British Motor Holdings (BMH) and Leyland Motor

Corporation (LMC), leaving Rootes to be acquired by the American multinational Chrysler. 17

BMH and LMC were merged in 1968 to form the British Leyland Motor Corporation under the

auspices of the state’s Industrial Reorganisation Corporation. In 1975, BLMC was taken into

public ownership under National Enterprise Board and renamed British Leyland. However, but

within a few years both BLMC and Rootes Chrysler were in serious trouble.

In 1975, two national reports by the Commons Expenditure Committee and the Central Policy

Review Staff respectively, focusing on West Midlands car producers, drew attention to a history

of low production, heavy over-manning, poor productivity and profitability in comparison with

European and Japanese firms, and a record of bad labour relations. For instance, it took British

workers twice as long as their Japanese counterparts to build a vehicle. Both reports, while

acknowledging the difficulty of comparing productivity levels internationally, referred to the

comparatively poor labour productivity observed between the British car industry and its German

counterpart.18

10

As the table in Appendix 1 indicates, vehicle output in the West Midlands fell almost

continuously from the boom years of the early 1970s down to the 2000s. Even in monetary terms

BLMC’s profits in 1973, at almost the peak of the boom, were well below those achieved ten

years earlier, and between 1968 and 1974 more money had been disbursed in dividends than had

been invested in the company.19

As Williams et al have argued, such circumstances led to

product-led decline, perhaps typified in vehicles such as the Marina, the Allegro or the Austin

Maxi which, due to poor design and engineering, failed to make any significant impact on a

market that was dominated by the two American multinationals, Ford and Vauxhall, with their

Cortina and Viva models respectively.20

What caused such a collapse?

Essentially at the time of creation BLMC consisted of a motley collection of nearly sixty plants,

factories and models that competed against each other, frequently within the same market

segment. As an entity BLMC reflected all that was weak in the British owned car industry: weak

management, too many plants, lacking in economies of scale, poor productivity and profitability

levels that were insufficient to generate enough cash to invest in new model development.21

The

inter-connected nature of these factors demanded a ruthless policy of rationalization when the

firm was formed in 1968. This failed to take place and two reasons appear to stand out. Firstly, in

1968 the firm was placed under the management of Sir Donald Stokes of Leyland. Stokes is

sometimes accused of being indecisive, but he saw himself more as a creator rather than as a

destroyer of jobs and so appears to have been reluctant to embark on a policy of rationalisation in

the belief that the situation could be rectified. Secondly, it is contended that, as unemployment

was rising in the late 1960s and a general election was due in 1970, the then Labour Government

put Stokes under pressure to avoid factory closures in the West Midlands which would have led

to a significant rise in unemployment.22

Serious loss of jobs may have made Labour-held West

Midlands parliamentary seats vulnerable in the forthcoming election, especially in the wake of

the opprobrium that had already been heaped on the Government following a similar series of

mergers and plant rationalisation in the UK telecommunications industry.23

With the onset of the financial crisis in 1974-75, the government’s main response to the situation

was to set up a committee of inquiry under Lord Ryder to investigate the state of BL and to make

recommendations for its future. The Ryder Report confirmed what had been said by the

previously mentioned Reports (cited above) and pointed specifically to the failure to rationalise

11

the firm as being its Achilles heel. Surprisingly, Ryder accepted the views of the existing

management team on how the firm might be revived along with a bland assessment that BL

could hold onto a 30 per cent market share. It was estimated that some £900 million of new

investment was required, but even this large sum was insufficient to meet the company’s needs.

Astonishingly, while stressing the need for model rationalization, Ryder did not recommend

factory closures, leaving the basic structure intact. He did advocate an improvement in labour

relations as well as a more centralized management structure. In sum the report paid scant

attention to the harsh realities of an increasingly competitive international car market. In spite of

its manifest deficiencies the government accepted the Report24

Within a short space of time matters deteriorated and by 1977 market share had plummeted from

32 to 20 per cent. Eventually the government realised the need for a drastic approach to

managing BL and in the late 1970s Michael Edwardes was appointed Chairman. A controversial

figure from the outset, Edwardes is perhaps best described as a turnaround manager, especially in

times of crisis. Edwardes wasted little time in effecting plant rationalisation by effectively

closing thirteen plants and reducing the work force from 198,000 to 108,000 approximately.25

Brutal though this may have been, it was essential. Moreover, Edwardes instituted labour

reforms and promoted new products such as the Mini, Maestro and Montego, but sadly none of

them made much impression as market share continued to dwindle. Despite further injections of

capital from the government Edwardes realised that BL was becoming too small to survive on its

own. It lacked the expertise to develop new models and so as a stop-gap Edwardes formed an

alliance with Honda. In return for a 20 per cent holding in BL, plus royalties, the Midlands firm

was allowed to produce a medium sized Japanese vehicle at its Longbridge plant and badge it as

the Triumph Acclaim. Essentially, this was recognition that Rover could no longer function as an

independent volume car producer. Indeed the last car developed independently by the firm was

the Mini Metro, which was launched in 1979.26

At the luxury end of the market, Jaguar proved to be a continuous drain on BL’s resources. Its

relatively poor performance against better designed and superior engineered products by its

competitors, BMW and Mercedes, became obvious. Output fell to circa 22,000 units in 1982.27

Jaguar cars had a poor reputation for quality, rust and unreliability. 28

To try to improve matters

Edwardes appointed John Egan as Chairman of Jaguar who implemented a series of reforms

12

which improved the company’s performance and reputation to a degree. Such was the

improvement that in 1984, in conformance with government policy, Jaguar was privatized before

being bought by Ford in 1987, thus stripping out the luxury car producer from BL, which had

been renamed the Austin Rover Group in 1982.29

Despite the image change and with the loss of Jaguar, Rover still struggled to compete in the

market place. This was recognized by Graham Day who was appointed company chairman in

1986 following a short stay in that position by Sir Austin Bide, who had succeeded Edwardes in

1982. Day, a Canadian who had previously been chairman of British Shipbuilders, was of the

opinion that market share was not as important as the profit made per unit sold and so he

determined to move in a different direction from Edwardes. He adopted the idea of

‘Roverisation’ in an attempt to rid the company and its products of the baggage of the old

BL/Austin-Morris image by trying to move up market and position what became known as the

Rover Group alongside Volvo, while emphasizing its ‘Britishness’ in export markets. No longer

would there be an emphasis on raising production back up to a million units a year when an

output of 500,000 might yield a better long term prospect. This was a bold and audacious move.

Day’s view was that increased profit per unit sold would put the firm in a healthier position

financially than by competing against Ford and Vauxhall at the volume end of the trade where

heavy price discounting was an accepted practice with cars often being sold at a loss. Initially,

Day’s strategy seemed to work and in 1987 a pre-tax profit of circa £27 million was recorded.

On the downside many consumers felt that a premium price was being asked for products which

were no better than the volume models sold by rival firms. In other words, it proved hard to

downplay the image of British Leyland and some of its disastrous products and so market share

continued to drop to 17 per cent.30

In 1988, in keeping with its philosophy of privatization, the Thatcher Government sold Rover to

British Aerospace (BAe). Basically the government had sold off its ‘problem’ and could boast

that at least it had kept Rover in British hands. When the sale was announced it was claimed that

the union of the two firms would bring about synergies with parallels being drawn with

Sweden’s Saab Aerospace and automotive divisions. Exactly how such synergies were to be

achieved between a small niche car manufacturer and a company whose own efficiencies were in

doubt at the time is highly debatable. In the event such synergy proved illusory, with BAe’s

13

investment in its auto subsidiary proving minimal, and in 1994 BAe, which was short of capital

for its aerospace division, sold Rover on to BMW.31

The question which naturally arises is why a relatively small maker of luxury vehicles would

want to take-over an ailing British firm that had been in decline for almost two decades? The

explanation lies in the importance of scale and market share in the auto industry. When

compared with Mercedes and Volkswagen-Audi in the German market, BMW was a relatively

small player and appeared to fear a predatory hostile take-over bid from either of its two German

rivals or from one of the American multinationals such as Ford. Therefore, it had little alternative

but to seek scale through finding a partner outside its domestic market, with Rover proving an

available choice. When the Germans came on the scene, the UK government gave Honda the

opportunity of buying the British firm, but the Japanese declined. Why is not clear, but perhaps

the Japanese were well aware of the true extent of Rover’s weaknesses.

BMW paid just over £1 billion, which was more or less the cost of developing a new BMW

model. In return BMW acquired a number of advantages: access to Rover’s small car technology

with front wheel drive (which it lacked); the K series engine; an additional 3 percent share of the

European market; a relatively low-cost production base; and the jewel in the crown, Land Rover,

one of the world’s leading producers of four-wheel drive sport/utility vehicles. The takeover

seemed to promise much, but in the end it delivered very little. It is normal to expect the buying

firm to have a clear idea of how its newly acquired partner would fit in with its own strategic

planning and product development so that genuine synergies might be achieved, with both

ultimately prospering. This, however does not seem to have been the case. The Germans, who

did not seem have any plans for integrating the two firms, allowed Rover to proceed for two

years prior to making any serious intervention in the running of the firm. Perhaps this was due to

the mistake of overestimating the quality of Rover’s senior management and capabilities at the

outset or due to a failure to appreciate of Rover’s real weaknesses in the UK market. It was only

in 1996 when BMW became aware of the spiraling costs of continuous rescheduling of

production and appalling build quality that it made decisive moves. The senior British managers,

one of whom was John Towers, left the firm and were replaced in many cases by Germans.32

What many British analysts and commentators anticipated was that BMW would finance much

needed new model developments at Rover whose middle and upper market segment offerings,

14

the 200, 400, 600 and 800 series, mainly Honda derivatives, were ageing fast in the market place.

A new middle range car was essential. Rover had such a model, the R30, in the development

stage, but almost inexplicably BMW cancelled it and focused instead on developing a new mini

and later a larger model that was to become the Rover 75. BMW did invest approximately £500

million a year including the building of a new engine plant at Ham’s Hall near Birmingham and

of a £750 million expansion at Land Rover; in contrast Longbridge was relatively neglected. Yet

the total sum of investment was insufficient to turn Rover round. Market share continued to fall

and by 1998 it hovered at around 10 per cent. Rover’s position became increasingly precarious

and the firm suffered an annual loss of £500 million. With a sagging home market share and

exports being hit by the high value of sterling, BMW called for a sterling devaluation only to be

told by the Chancellor that the root of the problem lay in Rover’s poor productivity rather than in

the value of the pound. To control costs the Bavarians sought refuge in redundancies and in

renegotiating the terms and conditions of employment which the workforce accepted. In addition

there was an increased emphasis on sourcing components from Europe because of Sterling’s

strength against the Euro. To make matters worse BMW was under severe competitive strain in

its home market, especially in the midst of the more general consolidation that was taking place

across the industry, and yet again fearing a hostile bid, it felt vulnerable.

Key shareholders, such as the Quandt, family, feared that Rover might act as a Trojan horse and

bring about the destruction of the entire entity through its continuing heavy losses and brand

weakness. In the end a game of brinkmanship was played by BMW. In 1999 the Bavarian firm

in return for going ahead with the Mini project and face lifts for the 200 and 400 series asked the

UK government for regional assistance otherwise it would consider building a replacement for

both cars in Hungary. Whether the threat was real or not, the UK Government offered aid.

However, BMW’s rival, Porsche, objected to the EU that such aid distorted markets and called

for an EU inquiry. In this context and faced with mounting losses, a drop in sales of 26 per cent

and a fall in UK domestic market share to only 6 per cent, BMW decided to sell Rover in 2000.

However, BMW did keep the Hams’s Hall engine factory in Birmingham and the Mini plant in

Oxford. At the same time it sold Land Rover to Ford.33

BMW sold Rover for £10 to a UK based group of Midland based entrepreneurs, one of whom

was John Towers. This group, which became known as the Phoenix Four, renamed the firm MG

15

Rover, promised to restore output to 200,000 units, build a replacement for the Rover 45, find a

viable partner and return to profit. This was an ambitious plan, but sadly unrealistic if only

because the Rover brand had become irrevocably tarnished and identified with failure.

Secondly, the group had little capital to invest and consequently was forced to sell off assets to

keep the firm going until its final demise in 2005. Thirdly, there was little possibility of finding a

credible partner if only because the key mergers and takeovers between American and European

firms in the industry had taken place over the previous decade. This impelled MG Rover to look

to second tier producers such as Korean and Chinese firms. The Shanghai Automotive Industrial

Corporation (SAIC) became initially interested in cooperating with Rover. However, given

Rover’s portfolio of ageing models, sales continued decline to a 3 per cent market share. At this

point, SAIC backed off as Rover’s financial difficulties became increasingly transparent as it had

no wish to inherit heavy legacy costs, including pension liabilities and redundancy costs. Finally

in April 2005 the firm was forced into administration, bringing about the end of volume

production in south Birmingham.34

A similar story emerges when the cases of Rootes/Chrysler and

Peugeot are discussed below.

From Rootes/Chrysler to Peugeot

As has already been alluded to, Rootes/Chrysler, too, presented serious problems at the volume

end of the auto industry in the West Midlands. A member of the British ‘Big Six’ in the 1950s

and 1960s, though lacking in economies of scale, output rose to a height of 150,000 units in 1959

and then fell slowly during the ensuing decade. Market share peaked at 12 per cent in 1967, only

one per cent above its 1954 figure, and in the 1960s losses were endured in six years out of ten.35

Rootes, like the rest of the UK owned industry suffered from weak model development, low

investment and low profitability. In sum the firm badly needed a partner. Such a partner was

found in the Chrysler Company based in the United States, recognized by far as the weakest of

the American ‘Big Three.’36

The Detroit based firm, facing heavy competition from Ford and

GM, sought to gain a foothold outside the United States and so looked for partners in Europe by

taking over Simca of France, Seat of Spain and finally Britain’s Rootes. Chrysler assumed full

control of Rootes in 1967, but in reality it was to prove an unsuitable partner in that its finances

were weak and it was seriously deficient in managing firms outside its homeland. In other words

Chrysler was a weak multinational in comparison with GM and Ford and had little to offer.37

16

As events were to demonstrate, Chrysler’s position in the UK was weak from the beginning and

continued to deteriorate. Its difficulties were not helped by the small size of the Ryton factory,

which was hemmed in by main roads, leaving no room for expansion. An initial step was to

embark on a round of new investment by getting rid of three very old fashioned model dedicated

assembly tracks and installing a long gate line track, capable of turning out a range of vehicles.

New equipment was installed at nearby Stoke engine plant in Coventry at a cost of £17 million.

Impressive as this may have sounded at the time, the American firm made it clear that this was

all that could be afforded and that any future investment would have to be raised through self-

sustained development. Indeed, by the early 1970s any advantage from the initial investment had

been eroded. More importantly, Chrysler introduced only one new model, the Avenger, during its

stay in Coventry. Launched in 1970, this vehicle was a success and proved a formidable rival to

offerings from Ford and Vauxhall. The problem was that neither of the latter two stood still and,

amid complaints of poor quality, the Avenger was soon overtaken by new and revamped rival

products, leaving the Chrysler model looking tired and, consequently, market share fell. The

outcome was that profitability was meagre and by 1975, with losses continuing to mount, the

American parent made it clear that unless government aid proved forthcoming then the firm

might well be forced to close and leave the UK.

The thought of a total shutdown by an American multinational presented a number of difficulties

for the UK government and again there was a resort to crisis management for several reasons.

Firstly, what became known as the ‘Chrysler Crisis’ came hard on the heels of the BL Crisis and

there was uncertainty as to whether the government could afford to bail out both firms.

Secondly, the prospect of both BL and Chrysler going out of business would also have had

serious adverse repercussions on employment levels throughout the supply chain. Thirdly, if the

latter transpired, unemployment in the region would rise to what might be termed politically

unacceptably high levels. Fourthly, rescuing Chrysler would fly in the face of a newly espoused

industry policy that ‘lame duck’ firms should be allowed to fail and market forces allowed to

prevail. Lastly, a Chrysler withdrawal would mean the closure of a factory at Linwood near

Glasgow in Scotland at a time when the Scottish National Party was rampant in the opinion

polls, and there was again a fear that such an event would have severe political repercussions, if

and when a general election was called. Faced with what was called a ‘smoking gun,’ the

government lost its nerve, reversed its recently espoused industrial policy and rescued Chrysler.38

17

The rescue package entailed the UK Government providing £162 million in return for Chrysler

giving a commitment to remain in Coventry and to introduce the more recently designed Alpine

model from Simca in France and so saved Ryton from extinction. Avenger production was to be

transferred to the Linwood plant. The agreement though came at the price of losing 8,000 jobs

through redundancies at the Coventry plants amid fears that Ryton would simply become an

assembly facility for French made vehicles. Chrysler’s problems were not confined to its British

operations. It also suffered a severe loss of share in its home market to the extent that it could not

sustain both its European and American operations. Finally, in 1978, it announced that it had

agreed to sell its British subsidiary to France’s Peugeot. At the same time is also sold its French,

South African and Australian interests to raise much needed capital in Detroit. Nevertheless,

British opinion was that the Americans had reneged on their agreement with the UK government.

For Peugeot, the acquisition of Chrysler was perceived as something of a mixed blessing.

Basically the French wanted Chrysler’s UK dealerships, but could not obtain these from the

Americans unless they took on the factories as well. Regardless of fears among the Coventry

work force, Peugeot gave a commitment to continue production at Ryton and at the Stoke engine

plant. The Alpine was duly transferred from France, updated and was soon joined by a newer

Horizon model. Like Chrysler before it, Peugeot, despite bringing in additional new vehicles

such as the Solara and Tagora, found increased market share elusive, never gaining any more

than 5-6 per cent of the UK market, with losses rising from £20 million up to £91 million in

1981, before a very modest profit of £4.9 million in 1983. A more serious problem for Ryton in

the 1980s was the failure to win a share in the production of the Peugeot 205, leaving it

dependent on ageing products. Essentially Ryton’s fear of simply being an assembly operation

for imported French kits were being realized especially when in 1984 the firm began assembling

the Peugeot 309 and later the Peugeot 405.39

Over its first decade in Coventry Peugeot lost around £100 million. Nevertheless, the French

parent boosted Ryton in the early 1990s by investing £350 million which included a new paint

shop, to facilitate production of the Peugeot 405, but within a fairly short space of time this, too,

was switched back to France and gradually the plant became dependent upon one product, the

Peugeot 306. It seemed as if the Ryton plant was becoming increasingly marginal to the

company’s needs except at times when there was a need to boost production However, in 1998

18

matters seemed to improve when it was announced that the new Peugeot 206 would be built

simultaneously in Coventry and France. This seemed to herald the safeguarding of the plant in

the short to medium term. The new car proved an immediate hit across Europe and once more

with booming demand Ryton proved itself useful as a ‘screwdriver plant’ in which pre-packed

kits from France were assembled.

As long as demand held up, Ryton was relatively safe, but once demand dipped heavily after

2004 and, when coupled with Peugeot’s announcement that the 206’s successor the Peugeot 207

would be built in Tvarna in the Czech Republic, the writing was on the wall for Ryton. The

company argued that Coventry’s costs were too high when compared with those in the Czech

Republic, pointing out that it was €415 more expensive to make a car in Coventry than it did in

Tvarna. This was despite the fact that the Coventry plant enjoyed a higher productivity rate than

some Peugeot plants in France, particularly the Sochaux plant. Many felt that Ryton was

deliberately sacrificed to preserve French jobs and because it was cheaper, quicker and easier to

get rid of UK workers than their French counterparts, especially as similar tactics had been

employed by Renault earlier when it closed its Belgian facility at Valvoorde, rather than close

poorer performing French plants. Indeed, the Times went as far as to accuse the Peugeot of

cowardice, but did have the grace to acknowledge that the firm was cutting back on its French

workforce by cutting shifts and production at the same time. Whatever the truth Ryton’s closure

cost 4,000 jobs, effectively ending volume production in the West Midlands.40

Thus, the near

continuous demise of volume production in the West Midlands from the 1990s onwards left the

region increasingly dependent upon the up-market brands of Jaguar and Land Rover. Both of

these were destined to become part of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group (PAG) as the American

firm tried to penetrate the European luxury market and escape dependency on its Blue Oval

products.

Ford and the Premier Automotive Group

It was from the late 1980s until 2000 that Ford assembled a cluster of firms which it hoped

would propel it into the European luxury car market and enable it to challenge Mercedes and

BMW. According to Nick Scheele, one time Chairman of Ford, each firm was acquired with a

specific strategy in mind. Aston Martin was seen a ‘luxury boutique’ firm looking at the very top

end of the market; Jaguar offered a well- known brand, a positive image, a good distribution

19

system and an existing customer base; Land Rover/Range Rover provided an entry to the fast

developing four-wheel drive market; while Volvo represented solidity, safety and appealed to

environmentally conscious consumers.41

Discussion here though will be confined to Jaguar/

Land Rover.

Putting together such a diverse group represented a unique challenge and Wolfgang Reitzle was

recruited from BMW to manage the PAG as its new CEO. Reitzle harboured a considerable

degree of ambition and realized that all of the PAG’s participants, particularly its British

members, would have to increase output to 1.2 million units by 2005. Failure to raise output

would confine the PAG’s products to being little more than niche players. Jaguar was asked to

raise it output of 80,000 units in 2000 to 200,000 by 2005; in the event production in the latter

year stood at circa 89,000. Thus the expected figures were not achieved and in March 2008

Jaguar and Land Rover were sold to Tata of India for $2.3 billion. In other words the PAG

proved an expensive failure.

Essentially the PAG was a disparate collection of firms, and the visions that synergies would be

achieved soon proved illusory, as so many of the products were at different stages in their

development cycles. Trying to synchronise these proved well-nigh impossible. Volvo, for

instance, was more or less allowed to pursue its own destiny and Aston Martin had little in

common with the two Coventry based firms. Moreover, the latter two were in a relatively poor

state when Ford acquired them. Indeed, Ford spent close on $10 billion in trying to revive

Jaguar. Serious mistakes were made in model development. It was soon evident that Jaguar

lacked both the capital and expertise to develop cars on its own and this was typified in the case

of the ‘S’ type and the X400, known as the ‘baby Jag.’ In the case of the latter, a lack of capital

meant that it had to be based on a Mondeo chassis, had a 20 per cent carry over from its volume

cousin and was underpowered for the American market at which it was targeted. Indeed, the

vehicle was described as a Mondeo pumped up with steroids. So poor was the car’s performance

that output was reduced quickly.42

Jaguar’s products also fared badly against the opposition because of a lack of aluminium bodies

and of diesel engines which accounted for roughly 50 per cent of all cars sold in Europe. Finally,

Jaguar suffered because its products were unattractive in its main market, the USA, where they

were considered old fashioned in style and had little appeal to younger buyers. No matter how

20

hard it tried the firm always seemed to be playing catch up as it lagged behind BMW, Mercedes

and Lexus. Additionally, in the early 2000s, US sales proved difficult because of the weakness of

the American dollar against Sterling, and it has been argued that this was the trigger factor that

led to the closure of Browns Lane in 2004. Finally, perhaps Ford made the crucial mistake of

overestimating the strength of the Jaguar brand in international markets.43

Events at Land Rover

proved little better. Ford did achieve some synergies with Jaguar in areas such as purchasing and

gradually the two firms functioned almost as one when it came to sharing backroom functions.

As with Jaguar, Ford had to spend considerable sums of money in having to modernize Land

Rover’s somewhat antiquated facilities. £130 million had to be spent in the first year alone to

upgrade the plant. New models did prove forthcoming and Ford expressed the view that Land

Rover could become a company flagship, but other events intervened. These were bound up with

Ford’s wider problems particularly in the USA where heavy losses were sustained. The firm had

been struggling for nearly two decades and in 2006 losses of $12 billion or £6 billion were

sustained. The precise details of how this transpired are not of immediate concern, but eventually

under a rescue plan in which nothing was sacred, it was decided to shed non-core businesses as

well to close 14 plants. The PAG was but a small part of Ford’s empire and so selling it off was a

device for raising much needed capital for the parent company. In 2007 Aston Martin was sold to

the racing car firm, Prodrive and, as has already been indicated, Tata bought the two Coventry

plants.

In sum the Ford/PAG experience with leading brands such as Jaguar and Land Rover can be

taken to demonstrate the vulnerability of the West Midlands to the vagaries of multinational

enterprise and how the forces of globalisation and external decision-making can render existence

precarious. That is not to downplay the serious challenges that faced Ford in their acquisition of

firms that so desperately required serious investment and modernization. However, such

challenges do raise questions over the decision to go ahead with such difficult takeovers.

Additionally the future for Tata, the Indian manufacturer that took control of Jaguar land Rover

for $2.3 billion (or £1.2 billion) in March 2008, must also be framed against the difficulties its

predecessors failed to come to grips with. To date Tata have displayed positive levels of

integration, committing to producing electric vehicles at its plant in Coventry.44

Yet the long-

term future of the manufacturer in the region remains unclear.

21

Conclusions

The growth and subsequent decline of the British Motor Industry in the post WWII era has

largely been shaped by both government policy and the underlying traits of the British

economy.45

Seeking to determine where true causation lies is a perilous exercise since describing

all possible reasons may serve to trivialize key factors, whereas to focus on the few may serve to

undermine the argument itself.46

Nevertheless, some effort must be made to explain the decline

of the industry in the West Midlands; structural issues definitely dogged the development of the

sector, poor managerial decision-making and a lack of long-term strategic planning by

government officials allowed for an economic landscape where international investors were

given free reign with limited consideration of the long-term impact on the automotive industry in

the region. The context for the decline was the growing importance of international investors and

the internationalization of markets.47

That the automotive industry in the West Midlands has undergone a painful structural change in

recent decades is not in question. Volume production has disappeared, leaving the region

precariously dependent on the two luxury producers Jaguar and Land Rover. Additionally, the

fall in production has helped bring about a concomitant decline in the components industry. The

reasons for this are both historical and structural. For decades the industry has suffered from a

long history of firms which have been too small to reap economies of scale and sufficiently high

productivity and profit levels to force the pace in high quality model development and market

penetration, rendering the industry vulnerable to rising levels of imports. Essentially, this has

amounted to a secular decline that gradually gained its own momentum to the extent that almost

regardless of company ownership it proved almost impossible to arrest the pace of decline at

both BL and Rootes/Chrysler/Peugeot. Finally, at the heart of this was repeated failure to

achieve a thorough structural rationalisation of the industry from the 1960s onwards, which for

too long left BL in particular as nothing more than a ramshackle collection of factories and

poorly developed models which failed in the market place.

Contrastingly, the decline of the volume side was offset by the rise of the luxury end of the trade,

but even here weaknesses have exhibited themselves until very recently. The reason for such

weaknesses are bound up with the fact that both of the luxury producers were under the aegis of

volume producers and so both suffered from similar shortages of capital investment, to the extent

22

that they appeared as niche players at that end of the trade in comparison with BMW and

Mercedes. This is perhaps best exemplified in the experience of JLR under BMW and in the

failure of the Ford PAG.

It is normally expected that inwards FDI by multinationals can exert a positive influence on the

domestic firms which come under their wing. This certainly has not been the experience in the

West Midlands. Inward investing firms such as BMW, Peugeot and Ford all had domestic

problems of their own and so were unable to provide the necessary capital and expertise to

enable Jaguar, Land Rover and for that matter Rootes to escape from a downward spiral and

become more successful than they had been prior to their being taken over. It is clear from the

fate of Ryton, Longbridge and Land Rover at Solihull under BMW, Peugeot and Ford

respectively that FDI proved no panacea to their difficulties, especially when decision making

was made overseas and they could quit the UK so easily under Britain’s lax redundancy laws.

The long term health of the industry was not helped by government policy simply because

neither of the main political parties has fully embraced a positive policy towards manufacturing

industry in general, preferring to intervene only when absolutely necessary in times of crisis as

shown by the experience of BL in its many guises, Chrysler and MG Rover. Similarly, it has

been argued that government policy towards maintaining the value of sterling and pushing

financial services to the detriment of manufacturing industry was a major factor faced by firms in

export markets. In this environment UK car firms sourced components from overseas, thereby

contributing to the hollowing out of the automotive industry in the region over the past twenty-

five years. Finally, how the industry will evolve in the future is highly contentious, but there is

little doubt that success or failure will depend upon Tata.

23

Appendix 1

Table 1: Output of cars in the UK and West Midlands, 1970-2008

Year Jaguar Land Rover Rover* Peugeot** Output UK Total WM % of UK

1970 ¬ ¬ 788,737 216,995 1,640,966 1,005,732 61.28

1971 ¬ ¬ 886,721 281,538 1,741,940 1,108,259 75.29

1972 ¬ ¬ 916,218 263,843 1,921,311 1,180,111 61.42

1973 ¬ ¬ 875,834 265,413 1,747,321 1,141,352 65.32

1974 ¬ ¬ 738,503 261,801 1,523,119 1,000,305 65.20

1975 ¬ ¬ 605,141 226,612 1,267,695 831,753 65.61

1976 ¬ ¬ 687,825 244,586 1,333,449 832,111 65.61

1977 ¬ ¬ 652,064 169,492 1,327,820 821,556 61.87

1978 ¬ ¬ 611,625 196,481 1,222,949 808,106 66.12

1979 ¬ ¬ 503,767 102,927 1,070,452 606,695 56.67

1980 ¬ ¬ 395,820 125,314 923,744 521,135 56.44

Σ1981 ¬ ¬ 413,440 127,239 954,650 530,879 55.60

1982 22,042 13,235 369,893 56,235 887,679 472,405 53.21

1983 27,977 12,181 433,183 126,503 1,044,597 599,759 51.41

1984 33,342 11,897 371,427 95,122 908,906 471,788 51.90

1985 38,378 14,212 450,892 67,066 1,047,973 532,170 50.23

1986 41,437 14,486 390,240 58,426 1,018,962 513,275 50.37

1987 48,020 20,778 450,726 45,549 1,142,683 519,770 45.48

1988 51,542 24,021 450,666 82,326 1,226,835 608,555 49.10

1989 48,582 31,863 438,816 107,195 1,299,082 622,393 47.91

1990 41,891 47,261 417,351 116,584 1,295,611 623,087 49.09

1991 22,967 35,673 359,951 87,983 1,236,900 506,574 40.95

1992 20,601 39,743 339,054 85,821 1,291,880 458,273 35.95

1993 29,567 50,524 356,280 72,902 1,375,524 509,273 37.02

1994 31,429 71,758 390,856 74,440 1,466,823 568,483 38.75

1995 41,023 99,533 374,418 78,379 1,532,084 593,353 38.72

1996 38,950 96,894 376,323 85,108 1,686,134 597,275 35.42

1997 43,551 93,007 394,379 84,994 1,711,923 615,931 35.97

1998 50,025 149,324 238,611 71,441 1,760,697 599,401 34.04

1999 86,317 154,327 225,772 162,554 1,799,004 628,970 34.96

2000 88,894 159,997 174,885 186,074 1,641,452 609,850 37.15

2001 122,472 139,005 163,144 186,102 1,492,365 610,723 40.92

2002 122,929 155,412 147,037 197,679 1,629,934 623,057 38.22

2003 126,121 147,545 132,789 207,237 1,657,558 613,692 37.02

2004 105,532 149,764 106,088 173,091 1,642,246 534,475 32.44

2005 84,046 175,879 29,604 126,521 1,596,356 416,044 26.06

2006 69,852 175,714 ¬ 75,401 1,442,085 320,967 22.25

2007 54,036 232,548 ¬ ¬ ¬ 286,578 18.67

2008 73,910 195,521 ¬ ¬ ¬ 269,431 18.62

* BLMC/BL/Austin Rover/Rover Group/MG Rover.

** Figures until 1978 represent Rootes/Chrysler. After this date the figures represent Peugeot.

Σ Until 1981 Jaguar/and Land Rover figures are included in Rover.

Source: Source: SMMT annual reports, 1970-2008.

24

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Management, vol. 2, no. 3, 2010, pp. 128-144. 7 Gomes E, Donnelly T, Collis C and Morris D “Mergers and Acquisitions as Strategic Methods of Business

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9 Williams K, Williams J and Thomas D “Why Are the British So Bad at Manufacturing?” London, Routledge,

1983; Wilkes S “Industrial Policy and the Motor Industry” Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988. 10

Collis C, Donnelly T, Gomes E and Morris D, “Upgrading the Automobile Industry in the West Midland’s

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27

11

Adeney, 1988, p. 278. 12

Thoms & Donnelly, op cit. 13

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), Annual Reports 1970-2008. 14

Donnelly T, Barnes S and Morris D “Restructuring the Automotive Industry in the English Midlands” Local

Economy, vol. 20, no. 3, 2005, pp. 249-265. 15

Collis et al, loc cit, 2007. 16

Turner G “The Car Makers” London, Eyre & Spottiswood, 1963. 17

Thoms & Donnelly, op cit, 2000. 18

Church, p. 48. 19

Ibid. 20

Williams et al, op cit. 21

Foreman-Peck J, Bowden S & McKinlay A “The British Motor Industry” Manchester, Manchester University

Press, 1995. 22

Thoms & Donnelly, op cit. 23

Ibid. 24

The Ryder Report “British Leyland: The Next Decade” HMSO, 1975. 25

Thoms & Donnelly, op cit. 26

Ibid. 27

Edwardes, 1983. 28

Ibid. 29

Egan J “The Money Programme” BBC Television, 27 February 1983. 30

Wood A “The Wheels of Misfortune, The Rise and Fall of the British Motor Industry” London, Sidgwick &

Jackson, 1988. 31

Thoms and Donnelly, op cit. 32

Donnelly T, Morris D & Mellahi D “Rover-BMW: from shotgun marriage to quickie divorce” International

Journal of Business Performance Management, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 302-315. 33

Ibid.; Gomes et al, op cit. 34

Berkeley N, Donnelly T, Morris D & Donnelly M “Industrial restructuring and the state, the case of MG Rover”

Local Economy, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 360-371. 35

Thoms and Donnelly, op cit. 36

Young S and Hood N “Chrysler UK: a Multinational in Transition” New York and London, Praeger, 1977. 37

Ibid. 38

Ibid.; Thoms and Donnelly, op cit. 39

Young S and Hood N, op cit. 40

Just Auto “Peugeot Confirm reduced role for Ryton” 24 February, 2005; BBC Television “Unions seek Talks on

Peugeot dispute” 21 March 2005; Davies G “Fears mount over UK Job cuts” This is Money, 21 March 2007; Hope

C “New Blow for Coventry as Peugeot cuts 850 jobs” Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2005; The Times “Peugeot’s

English Lesson” 19 April 2006; Autocar “Why Ryton is closing” 24 April 2006. 41

Scheele N “The Acquisition of Jaguar by Ford” telephone interview with N. Scheele, ex-Chairman of Ford, 5

March 2004. 42

O’ Connell D “Focus wanted - buyer for Jag” The Sunday Times, 6 August 2006. 43

Gomes et al, op cit. 44

BBC news, Tata starts electric car production in Coventry, 24 March 2011 online at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-12850454 45

Foreman-Peck J, Bowden S & McKinlay A, 1995, p. 67. 46

Ibid, p.90.

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